Obama intervened on a ban due to standards essential patents. There is a world of difference between SEP and design patents. SEP are necessary for the products to work and have to be licensed on FRAND terms. Design patents do not have to be licensed. If the company owning a design patent doesn't license it, you just have to use something different. It's not needed to make the product work.

This still provides an unfair advantage to Apple. Essentially, by dropping the ban against Apple it's telling Apple they can use steal not pay for any SEP and the other company has no negotiating rights. Anyone else using the technology pays a fee. Why does Apple get to all of a sudden decide we want to use this, but not pay..

The whole patent system is horrible. Until it gets fixed these bans need to stop. Most of them never hold up anyway. And are just tactics used to hurt competitors.

Just as professional sports need referees to enforce the rules and make sure that both teams are playing fairly, so the free market requires regulations to make sure that no one tries to cheat or gain an unfair advantage....regulation to make sure that no one is 'cheating' is essential to the free market...the market cannot be truly free unless and until there is assurance that no one is cheating by trying to unfairly restrict competition...